Not Fit for a Dog!

Michael W. Fox

Description

Highlighting the dangers of modern pet food--how it is unbalanced, creates addiction, and often contains ingredients that can literally poison your pet, this book destroys the myths propounded by pet food companies that human food is bad for pets, and that natural food diets are unsafe. Three veterinarians share their expertise and scientific evidence, providing an in-depth appraisal of the pet food industry and what people are feeding to their cats and dogs. This revolutionary book teaches how to read pet food labels and what ingredients to avoid, how to save on pet bills by preventing diet-related disease in pets, why veterinarians are often ignorant of the health effects of manufactured pet food, how a change in diet can cure many diet-related illnesses, and why organic farming practices and suppliers can be the best choice for pets. Armed with this information, people will be able to provide a better and healthier life for their animals.

Informations

• Publié par: Linden Publishing
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781610351515
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Truth About Manufactured Dog and Cat Food

Michael W. Fox, B.Vet. Med., Ph.D., D.Sc., M.R.C.V.S
Elizabeth Hodgkins, D.V.M
Marion E. Smart, D.V.M. Ph.D.

Fresno, California
Copyright © 2009 by Michael Fox
All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Published by
Quill Driver Books, an imprint of Linden Publishing
2006 South Mary, Fresno, CA 93721
559-233-6633 / 800-345-4447
QuillDriverBooks.com

Quill Driver Books may be purchased for educational, fund-raising, business or promotional use. Please contact Special Markets, Quill Driver Books, at the above address or phone numbers.

Quill Driver Books Project Cadre:
June Clark, Doris Hall, Linda Kay Hardie, Christine Hernandez, Dave Marion, Stephen Blake Mettee, Monica Stevens, Kent Sorsky

First Printing

ISBN 978-1-61035-151-5

To order a copy of this book, please call 1-800-345-4447.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fox, Michael W., 1937-
Not fit for a dog! : the truth about manufactured dog and cat food / by Michael W. Fox, Elizabeth Hodgkins, and Marion E. Smart.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-61035-149-2
1. Pet food industry. I. Hodgkins, Elizabeth M. II. Smart, Marion E.,
1944- III. Title.
HD9340.A2F69 2008
338.4’766466 dc22
2008003481
Contents

Foreword
Introduction

Chapter 1
An Introduction to What You Are Feeding Your Pet

Chapter 2
The Largest Pet Food Recall Ever

Chapter 3
Pet Foods: A Veterinary and Ethical Evaluation

Chapter 4
Digestibility, Bioavailability, and All that Academic Stuff

Chapter 5
Veterinary Prescription Foods

Chapter 6
The Predator Among Us: How Cats Are Unique

Chapter 7
Diets for Healthy Cats: A Recipe for Disease?

Chapter 8
When Cat Foods Become Drugs: A Prescription for Disaster

Chapter 9
Finding Our Way Back: A New Map for Feline Health

Chapter 10
Future Foods: Genetically Engineered or Go Organic?

Chapter 11
Diet, Nutrition, Health and Behavior: Surveys and Overview

Appendix A
Cooking For Your Pet: Dog and Cat Food Recipes

Appendix B
Genetically Engineered Foods and Pet Health Issues

Appendix C
Pet Food Research Methods

Appendix D
Dog and Cat Vaccination Protocols

Notes and References
Index
Foreword

W hen I qualified as a veterinarian in 1973, I left veterinary college believing I could cure almost all the patients I would meet during my veterinary career. It soon became apparent that I was wrong: So many dogs and cats with so much chronic disease, and so many drugs that didn’t cure, or caused serious side effects.
After some years I discovered there were other treatments for pets acupuncture, herbal medicine, homeopathy and all these became new and effective therapies. But still I had patients that didn’t respond completely, and more to the point I was seeing ever-increasing numbers of pets suffering from inflammatory bowel disease, eczema, diabetes and urinary tract infections that needed to be cured. What was the cause of all this chronic disease, and why, despite my best efforts, did some patients respond poorly to treatment?
Eventually and by this time I had been practicing veterinary medicine for twenty years I realized the root cause of most of these diseases. Something so simple, so obvious. Diet. The food that my patients were eating was making them ill.
Looking back now, it seems amazing that it took so long for me to realize that feeding dogs and cats day in, day out, on processed foods, laden with carbohydrates, would damage their health. Carbohydrates are not natural foodstuffs for cats, or for dogs as their main food. Processed pet foods are not healthy foods. They have artificial colorings, artificial flavorings, preservatives, peculiar-sounding ingredients such as "animal digest," "mechanically retrieved meat" in fact, one quick look at the ingredients is enough to sound warning bells for anyone endowed with a modicum of common sense.
Once I began to suggest natural, healthy diets for my patients, their health began to improve. Many clients found it a little odd when I advised throwing away their bags of kibble and cans of cat food. But most of them saw the sense of feeding their pets "real" food. Just what their pets would eat in the wild.
If only I had understood the importance of a natural healthy diet for pets twenty or thirty years ago, how much more I could have helped my patients. So why didn’t I? The book you are about to read, had it been available then, would have saved me decades of misunderstanding the fundamental relationship between natural healthy nutrition and a vibrant healthy pet.
Not Fit for a Dog! highlights the dangers of modern pet food how it is unbalanced, creates addiction, and often contains ingredients that can literally poison your pet. It explodes the myths propounded by pet food companies that human food is "bad" for pets, and that natural diets are unsafe. It exposes the horrific truths that pet food manufacturers will sell you a ‘normal’ diet for your cat that will cause diabetes, and then sell you another prescription diet to help control the diabetes, and how prescription diets themselves can cause illness.
This book is a massive indictment of the pet food industry, but also of our whole approach to growing and processing food for us humans as well as for our pets.
I asked the question: why didn’t I realize for so long the dangers of manufactured pet food, and the benefits of a natural diet? The reason is that veterinary students are not given the facts. Indeed, information and training in pet nutrition for veterinary students is given, funded and controlled to a huge extent by the pet food industry itself.
If this book had been available when I was a student and a newly qualified vet, it would have transformed my attitude to nutrition and health for pets. If I was able, I would lock every veterinary student and every practicing veterinarian in a room with a copy of this book, and not let them out until they had read it from cover to cover.

RICHARD ALLPORT B.Vet.Med., M.R.C.V.S.
Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, England
Introduction

T he pet food recall in spring 2007 the biggest pet food recall ever, that caused the untimely deaths of an estimated 8,500 cats and dogs across North America brought three concerned veterinarians together to write this book and share with pet owners, other veterinarians, and animal-care providers their professional expertise and opinions on what is best to feed companion animals for their ultimate health and happiness.
Feeding one’s pet is an important ritual for cat and dog owners because giving food is one of the most effective ways to express affection and appreciation and affirm the bond between the animal and the human care giver.
The sanctity of this fundamental part of the human-companion animal bond includes the trust that pet owners have in the various brands and varieties of commercial processed pet foods, often recommended by their veterinarians, that they feed every day to their beloved dogs and cats. Most pet owners trust veterinarians to put first and foremost the overall health and well-being of the clients’ animal companions.
But the same cannot be said of the pet food industry that is a subsidiary of the multinational human food industry an agribusiness enterprise with considerable political influence that puts profits first. It has turned the recycling of human food and agricultural byproducts and wastes into a multibillion dollar business. While it is highly profitable, is it nutritious? Is it safe? We believe the answer is no.
The massive recall of more than 1,000 different varieties of cat and dog food is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. At deeper levels, beneath the radar of inadequate government oversight, are serious problems when it comes to pet (and human) food manufacturers’ claims and assurances of safety and quality. As this book reveals even disregarding the poison-contaminated pet food ingredients bought on the cheap from China by American pet food manufacturers and suppliers cats and dogs fed conventional manufactured pet foods are more likely to suffer chronic and costly quality of life issues at their owners’ expense and anguish.
Feeding our pets a variety of nutritious, wholesome, safe foods appropriate for the individual species for instance, cats are carnivores, and cannot ever be vegetarians is a basic duty and fulfills an obligation we assume when we chose to own animals.
To some, this is sentimentalism and an unconscionable ideal when there is so much human poverty and malnutrition in the world. But the two are connected, as is the suffering of millions of sick, starving, poisoned, and dying dogs and cats in the third world. The dynamic is more rich versus poor, rather than pets versus people. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, "The cattle of the rich steal the bread of the poor."
At the impoverished end of the global market food chain, dogs and cats, along with other domestic animals, suffer many illnesses due in large part to dietary immunodeficiency. Dietary deficiencies mean weakened immune systems for humans and other animals. At the more affluent, if not conspicuously consumptive, end of the food chain, cats and dogs mirror many of the diseases of dietary excess and imbalance evident in their owners, notably obesity, diabetes, heart disease, various forms of cancer, arthritis, allergies, digestive disorders, and other diet-related health problems. These two po